> Crucially, no routine blood biomarker, lipid metric, or clinical risk score could identify these individuals with inflamed coronary arteries.

I call bs on this. There are two common blood tests that are meant for it:

1) hs-CRP (High-sensitivity CRP)

2) Lp-PLA2: Lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 (Lp-PLA2), also known as platelet activating factor Acetylhydrolase, is an inflammatory enzyme that circulates bound mainly to low density lipoproteins and has been found to be localized and enriched in atherosclerotic plaques. In multiple clinical trials, Lp-PLA2 activity has been shown to be an independent predictor of coronary heart disease and stroke in the general population. Measurement of Lp-PLA2 may be used along with traditional cardiovascular risk factor measures for identifying individuals at higher risk of cardiovascular disease events.

I have routinely had both of these blood tests among others, although I paid myself to get them.

As for hs-CRP, it will likely show an elevation. If you use a binary classifier with a higher threshold of what's safe, e.g. 3.0 instead of 1.0, you will miss it! I am guessing this is why they missed it.

> Importantly, routine bloodwork and clinical tools – including cholesterol markers (ApoB, non-HDL-C), blood sugar (HbA1c), systemic inflammation (hs-CRP), and a widely used cardiovascular risk calculator (AHA PREVENT-ASCVD) – showed no correlation with the presence of coronary inflammation and failed to identify which patients had inflamed arteries.

The article specifically says those tests didn't correlate with the result of the scans. Why do you call BS on it?